Reduced carbon emission estimates from fossil fuel combustion and cement production in China

Journal Article · Wed Aug 19 00:00:00 EDT 2015 · Nature (London)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14677· OSTI ID:1265649

Liu, Z. ^[1]; Guan, D. ^[2]; Wei, W. ^[3]; Davis, S. ^[4]; Ciais, P. ^[5]; Bai, J ^[6]; Peng, S. ^[5]; Zhang, Q. ^[2]; Hubacek, K. ^[7]; Marland, Gregg ^[8]; Andres, Robert Joseph ^[9]; Crawford-Brown, D. ^[10]; Lin, J. ^[11]; Zhao, H. ^[2]; Hong, C. ^[2]; Boden, Thomas A. ^[9]; Feng, K. ^[7]; Peters, Glen P. ^[12]; Xi, F. ^[13]; Liu, J. ^[14] ; Li, Y. ^[15]; Zhao, Y. ^[16]; Zeng, Ning ^[7]; He, K. ^[2]

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1. Harvard Univ., Cambridge, MA (United States)
2. Tsinghua Univ., Beijing (China)
3. Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Shanghai (China)
4. Univ. of California, Irvine, CA (United States)
5. Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives (CEA-Saclay), Gif-sur-Yvette (France)
6. Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Institute of Coal Chemistry
7. Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)
8. Appalachian State Univ., Boone, NC (United States)
9. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
10. Univ. of Cambridge (United Kingdom)
11. Peking Univ., Beijing (China)
12. Center for International Climate and Energy Research (CICERO), Oslo (Norway)
13. Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing (China)
14. Beijing Forestry Univ., Beijing (China)
15. Univ. of East Anglia, Norwich (United Kingdom)
16. Nanjing Univ. (China)

Nearly three-quarters of the growth in global carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and cement production between 2010 and 2012 occurred in China. Yet estimates of Chinese emissions remain subject to large uncertainty; inventories of China’s total fossil fuel carbon emissions in 2008 differ by 0.3 gigatonnes of carbon, or 15 per cent. The primary sources of this uncertainty are conflicting estimates of energy consumption and emission factors, the latter being uncertain because of very few actual measurements representative of the mix of Chinese fuels. Here we re-evaluate China’s carbon emissions using updated and harmonized energy consumption and clinker production data and two new and comprehensive sets of measured emission factors for Chinese coal. We find that total energy consumption in China was 10 per cent higher in 2000–2012 than the value reported by China’s national statistics, that emission factors for Chinese coal are on average 40 per cent lower than the default values recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and that emissions from China’s cement production are 45 per cent less than recent estimates. Altogether, our revised estimate of China’s CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production is 2.49 gigatonnes of carbon (2 standard deviations = ±7.3 per cent) in 2013, which is 14 per cent lower than the emissions reported by other prominent inventories. Over the full period 2000 to 2013, our revised estimates are 2.9 gigatonnes of carbon less than previous estimates of China’s cumulative carbon emissions. Our findings suggest that overestimation of China’s emissions in 2000–2013 may be larger than China’s estimated total forest sink in 1990–2007 (2.66 gigatonnes of carbon) or China’s land carbon sink in 2000–2009 (2.6 gigatonnes of carbon).

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC)
• Grant/Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1265649
• Journal Information: Nature (London), Journal Name: Nature (London) Journal Issue: 7565 Vol. 524; ISSN 0028-0836
• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Climate-change mitigation
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Sustainability